1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to systems and methods for providing product and service advertisements through networks for communication via video displays or loud speakers at public locations. More particularly, the system of the invention provides advertisements that are optimized in accordance with characterizations of people that happen to be at the public location at a given time.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Advertisements bring people's attention to available goods and/or services. Advertisements are usually provided via radio, television (TV), newspapers, letter hand-outs, junk mail and similar media, and provided to members of the public in public places, e.g., movie theaters, on bill boards etc. The problem with these kinds of advertisements is that they do not distinguish among different users according to the user's tastes, interests, hobbies. That is, some advertisements are specific for some classes of people (for example, children, adults, men, women and other classes).
Class specific advertisements are still too broad to take into account characteristics specific to a particular user. Class specific advertisements are sometimes displayed in places where there are no users who are members of the class.
Commonly-owned, co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/183,402, entitled “DISTRIBUTED PERSONALIZED ADVERTISEMENT SYSTEM AND METHOD” (IBM D#YO998-374) now U.S. Pat. No. 6,334,109 B1, the whole content and disclosure of which is incorporated by reference as if fully set forth herein, suggests some ways for providing advertisements that are specialized for individual users. This is done by identifying individuals when they perform transactions and generating the advertisement that is based on this user profile that is stored in special user databases. These individual advertisements are displayed on some means that accompany and/or enables the user transaction, e.g., tickets, back sides of receipts, teller terminals etc.
However, this approach still does not solve the problem of presenting advertisements that best fit a group of persons located in a public location such as, e.g., a movie theater, a shop, a stadium etc.
It would be highly desirable to provide a system and method for presenting advertisements that are optimized to best fit a group of persons at a public location.